UCLA holds 2nd vigil for slain professor as police probe continues

Students and faculty from the University of California, Los Angeles and the surrounding community will hold a second vigil on Friday to pay tribute to a professor who was gunned down in a murder-suicide committed by a former student.

Catania Billalovos, left, holds onto Mireia Villanova, right, as they stand in front of a vigil for professor William Klug at the University of California, Los Angeles, Thursday.(AP Photo)

Students and faculty from the University of California, Los Angeles and the surrounding community will hold a second vigil on Friday to pay tribute to a professor who was gunned down in a murder-suicide committed by a former student.

On Thursday, hundreds gathered to grieve the loss of engineering professor William Klug who police say was shot and killed in a small office on campus on Wednesday by Mainak Sarkar, 38, who then took his own life.

“It will take time to cope and overcome the sadness that has cloaked our campus, but we will do it and we will do it together,” said Danny Siegel, the president of the student council at UCLA during the vigil.

The base of UCLA’s Bruin Bear statue on campus was covered with notes paying tribute to the well-liked professor as students completed finals and class work ahead of summer break.

Friday’s vigil will be held outside Boelter Hall where, police said, Sarkar came armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips to kill Klug. He also planned to kill another professor, who was off campus and unharmed.

Sarkar, a former UCLA student, shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to the school and killed Klug, police said.

Students walk past the engineering building as they leave campus after police officers conducted a search at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus after it was placed on lockdown following reports of a shooter that left two people dead in Los Angeles, California.
(Reuters)

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkar’s St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a “kill list” that included the name of the woman, Klug’s name and the name of the other professor.

Officials would not release the name of the woman. Police said they found her body at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis.

A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011.

Neighbors also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not indicate whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced.

An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage.

A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together.

Sarkar came from India’s eastern state of West Bengal, where he graduated in aerospace engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2000, according to an ex-classmate and the university’s alumni list.

Staff at his secondary school in the industrial town of Durgapur remember him as an able student who passed his exams with good results.